Reformat without a disc drive?

[SolitarySue]

I just got a Dell Mini 9 and I like it but the hard drive is too small (only 8 GB!) so I am going to sell it but I need to wipe the hard drive first, and reinstall Windows. The problem is that because it's a Netbook it has no disc drive. I have a USB flash drive but it only has 941 MB on it & I don't know if that's enough space. I have the Windows XP S3 disc (and the recovery CD) that came with the Mini but no drive to put them in.

Also, I pressed 0 at startup to get into the boot options, and I clicked on boot from USB / digital drive, but after a bunch of "initializing" it just kept saying: bash-2.05b# and none of the command prompts I know of were working. I thought Bash was a Linux thing? Am I really that much of a n00b?

Anyhow, I need a good step-by-step way to reformat this hard drive, and also make it so that Windows can be reinstalled, because this thing will never sell without an OS installed, since it has no disc drive; no one's going to want that hassle.

Any help anyone can give me is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[sikvik]

Why not get a external optical to run the recovery Cd, to format and reinstall to factory specs.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...top-inspiron-9

Just to clarify it's the sixth from left. Same link as the page !!

Did the Mini come with Ubuntu's intrepid or XP. Wondering about the bash-2.05 as well??

As for the XP SP3 is that Dell OEM??

Cheers...

[sikvik]

Yikes!!! double post..Pls delete..

[SolitarySue]

I managed to get XP reinstalled using my USB flash drive but now my problem is I still can't get online. I downloaded all of the Network related drivers from Dell's website but it's still saying that there's no modem. It just has the little LAN icon in the taskbar with the red X over it.

Any suggestions?

[satrow]

Hmm, chipset drivers should be the first thing to install, often other components won't be detected or installed correctly until they are.

[plodr]

If it is like my eeepc, the DVD, or in your case CD, has all the proper drivers to restore your computer to factory condition with the hardware working properly. If you are unwilling to purchase an external optical drive, then you need to find a friend with an external drive, go to his/her house and restore your Dell mini that way.